Thirteen Storeys by Jonathan Sims

Set in Tower Hamlets, a deprived borough of London, this novel centres around the fictional Banyan Court, a housing Tower Block built by the reclusive billionaire, Tobias Fell. The block towers over the neighbouring streets and is home to middle-class residents who can afford its units, with a social housing annexe hidden around the back and made of substandard materials for poorer occupants.

Fell has made his fortune through various nefarious and immoral dealings (show me a billionaire who hasn’t?) but has managed to cover the extent of his rotten affairs with a mixture of litigation, intimidation, and charitable spending (again, not uncommon in the billionaire class). In his twilight years, he has retired to his penthouse and is now rarely, if ever, seen. A selection of residents in the tower, and its poor annexe, receive invitations out of the blue to a dinner party he is giving in the penthouse and this is the culmination of the story. Before that, we are introduced to each character.

What I really liked about this novel is that it is in effect a series of interconnected short stories, each long chapter focusing on a different character, introducing us to their lives, revealing how they discover the tower’s spooky and supernatural secrets and concluding with them receiving their invitation from Fell. Each character has little choice but to attend the party by the end of their individual story, whatever misgivings they might have (some do, some don’t), as whatever it is that inhabits the fabric of the building has reached out and irrevocably touched them. I’m not giving away any spoilers by saying the concluding chapters focus on the dinner party itself, we finally discover what is behind all the hauntings, and why these guests have been invited by Fell. 

This is a great modern ghost/horror story and as well as doing what such a story is designed to do - give us the creeps and scares - there’s a fair bit of social commentary running through in the background. Anyone who’s lived in London, or indeed any big metropolis, will be familiar with issues surrounding housing and affordability. Similarly, billionaires and oligarchs and disparities of wealth are regularly in the news. None of this is laid on too thick, however, and at no point does the author preach; instead, the social commentary is expertly weaved through the horror narrative.   

An excellent novel and highly recommended.

4 out of 5 stars 

 

The Package by Sebastian Fitzek

 

Dr Emma Stein is a psychiatrist and is at a conference where she’s raped by a serial killer known as “The Hairdresser” because he shaves the victims’ heads. Unlike his other victims, all sex workers, he doesn’t kill Emma but leaves her alive. She’s deeply traumatised and turns into a recluse. Her husband, a criminal profiler in the German police, secures their property with locks and gates and she spends her days and nights frightened by every noise or shadow. One day a package is delivered for a neighbour whose name she doesn’t recognise and so is set in motion a series of events that will bring to a conclusion the trauma of her rape and that of her abusive childhood.

 

Go online and read reviews of The Package by Sebastian Fitzek, one of Germany’s most successful crime novelists, and you will find it divides people. Some love this book, and some hate it. Those that hate it often complain of how unrealistic the plot is. Those who love it, some of them anyway, concede this but say you just have to suspend disbelief. 

 

I’m with the lovers. This is a madcap ride of a book and an absolute page-turner of a novel. Is it completely unrealistic? Hell, yes. The plot has so many holes you could drive a truck through. But it becomes apparent quite quickly that the author doesn’t care, he’s not after realism, he’s just looking to entertain his readers, and entertain them he does. This is my first Sebastian Fitzelf novel, I’ve not read him before (though I have another novel of his, Passenger 23, courtesy of NetGalley, and ready to go) so I don’t know if this is usual for him at all. But I loved this book.

 

Absolutely bonkers and a hell of a read, I recommend this to anyone who can suspend disbelief and just go with the ride.

 

4 out of 5 stars 

The Stranger by Simon Conway

 

Set in the continuing tumult of the Syrian conflict and the mayhem wrought by ISIS, this novel follows MI6 officer, Jude Lyon, as he hunts for a secretive, almost mythical, terrorist who’s skilled with explosives. The man, known only as The Stranger, is believed to have escaped Syrian government custody and is on his way to the UK to wreak his revenge after the UK authorities helped to have him kidnapped and imprisoned for torture. But is the man they believe to be The Stranger even him? Or might he be a cut-out for the real bomber?

 

Simon Conway is in my opinion one of the best contemporary thriller writers. But he’s criminally underrated and I rarely see his books mentioned. This is a real shame because all of the books of his that I’ve read have been fantastic and The Stranger is no different. Recently I spoke to a literary agent who told me that in his opinion there are too many books on the market that feature Islamic fundamentalism, and I agree with that assessment. Like the Russians during the Cold War, al Qaeda and ISIS are all-too-often the go-to baddies in fiction, and many of the works that feature them are run of the mill. But equally, it would be terrible if this novel was caught up in that dismissal, for it stands head and shoulders above the competition.

 

The Stranger is brilliantly told and brought to life and has an original plot which I won’t reveal here for risk of spoilers. Needless to say, it will do nothing for one’s faith in the intelligence services, not a surprise in a post-dodgy dossier world.  But the malfeasance and double-dealing of the intelligence chiefs in this novel rival that infamous example, and unfortunately, are all too believable.

 

What really sets The Stranger apart is the namesake villain. He’s a chilling creation and steals the show. While Conway’s protagonist, MI6 man Jude Lyon, is compelling enough, he can’t help but be overshadowed by his antagonist. If I have once minor criticism, it’s The Stranger's sexual deviancy, which he indulges in with a female acolyte who’s obsessed with him. There’s nothing graphic about it, the author doesn’t dwell on it at all, but I found this strand unnecessary and at danger of making him into a pantomime villain. But luckily Conway doesn’t linger on this and thus it doesn’t spoil what is otherwise an excellent portrayal of a terrifying adversary.

 

The Stranger is a really good book and I really hope this brings the author to more reader’s attention.

 

4 out of 5 stars

The Boatman's Daughter by Andy Davidson

 

Miranda Crabtree is a young girl who lives with her father in the Arkansas bayou. They ferry a witch named Iskra around and she performs midwifery duties for local people. One day the witch performs such services for a dictatorial preacher, Billy Cotton, who leads his flock like a cult. Cotton’s wife gives birth to a deformed child with webbed feet and has died in childbirth. When Cotton tries to kill the child, Iskra saves him and they take the child to a mysterious island. Here Iskra and Miranda’s father take the child into the woods and when Miranda follows, she finds the child but not her father, who has been killed.

 

Miranda raises the child on her own and ten years later is employed running dope by Cotton and a corrupt cop, Charlie Riddle. But Cotton’s flock has deserted him and he’s dying of cancer. He’s addled by the guilt of his wife dying in childbirth and needs a sacrifice. So, one day, Miranda arrives to pick up dope but the traffickers have something very different: a young girl. She refuses and takes the girl home, even though she knows that Cotton and Riddle will come looking for her, and when they do, Cotton might discover that his son is in fact not dead.

 

The Boatman’s Daughter is a fantastic novel that pulses with atmosphere and a slice of Southern Gothic that masterfully mixes horror with crime fiction. This is a book that seamlessly blends magic and mythology and blood sacrifice with corruption and the evil that men do. The bayou the author conjures is both a brutal and beautiful landscape, populated by (mostly) brutal people. This is a place far out of the reach of the authorities, and those that are present are corrupt and dangerous, as Charlie Riddle – who along with the other authority figure, Billy Cotton, is one of the major antagonists are testament.

 

This is the author’s second novel and the first book of his that I’ve read. It won’t be my last as this is highly recommended.

 

4 out of 5 stars  

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

 

Lewis, Gabe, Cass and Ricky are four friends. They’re Native Americans of the Blackfeet tribe and were raised on a reservation. One day they go out on an illegal elk hunt and slaughter a large number of elk. This is an event that will haunt them, quite literally.

 

Ten years later and something is haunting the quad. A spirit – a woman with an elk head – and it wants revenge. Ricky is the first. In a prologue, he is attacked in the car park of a bar and tries to defend himself with a wrench, damaging several trucks in the process. In modern America, Native Americans face racial violence, and when the elk woman vanishes, he faces the wrath of the truckers who beat him to death.

 

The elk woman now stalks the other three and where this book excels is how the author shows it slowly driving them mad. Without giving spoilers, the most shocking and compelling part of the novel for me is the part which deals with Lewis. He’s escaped the reservation and is married to a white woman. But is she the elk woman? Has it possessed her? Or perhaps it’s the crow Indian who he works with and who flirts with him?

 

Later the vengeful spirit pursues the last of the two, Gabe and Cass. Both have moved on with their lives, Cass having settled down with a woman he hopes to marry and Gabe with a daughter who’s a talented basketball player. The reader knows that the elk spirit will try to kill the men, but the tension is heightened by who she might take down with them.

 

This is a fantastically written novel and as well as horror, it examines the Native American experience. The author, Stephen Graham Jones, is himself a Blackfeet Native American and it comes across, this being a novel written with real heart. This is the first novel by the author I’ve read, but certainly won’t be my last.

 

4 out of 5 stars

Who They Was by Gabriel Krauze

 

Snoopz is young man from a polish family living in London. His twin brother is an accomplished musician, his father a cartoonist, but he has been drawn to a life of violence and crime in inner-city London. Hanging out with kids from a nearby estate he smokes drugs and commits violent street robberies. The novel opens with a violent and vicious robbery of a woman on the street. All the while though, he’s also studying for an English degree and the violence and thuggery is interspersed with descriptions of seminars and lectures.

 

The author, Gabriel Krauze, was himself engaged in this life, indeed this is clearly a very thinly disguised memoir, there being many similarities between Snoopz and himself, and this lends the text a certain credibility. 

 

One thing of note is gangs are rarely mentioned and Snoopz himself appears to have no particular affiliation. Gangs are constantly in the news at the moment, yet recently I met someone who works in prisons who told me that their prevalence is exaggerated, that often police claim offenders are part of a gang as they know it plays well with juries, but really it’s just a  group of mates. That certainly seems the case here, Snoopz and his friend just rob people for money and smoke drugs together and are not part of any wider criminal enterprise.

 

The best element of this novel is the juxtaposition between the protagonist’s English studies and his criminality. In particular he takes Nietzsche’s work to heart, the philosopher’s writings on morality justifying the criminality and violence he commits against others. When he discusses morality with a seminar group it really is quite chilling, for we the reader knows his secret, that this isn't just an academic exercise for him.

 

In many ways Who They Was is a very nihilistic novel. While there is a character arc in that the protagonist grows out of crime, there’s no regret or remorse for what he’s done. In many ways this reminded me of Anthony Burgess’s Clockwork Orange (the novel, not the film), the protagonist of which never really comes to feel any contrition. This in itself is unsettling, though perhaps honest. In fiction we’re led to belief that people who commit crimes face comeuppance, or at least feel shame, but in reality, it’s as likely that just as many don’t.

 

Who They Was is a disconcerting and challenging novel and one that’s well worth a read.

 

4 out of 5 stars

The Young Team by Graeme Armstrong

 

Azzy Williams is a young teenager in North Lanarkshire, Scotland. It’s a deprived part of the country, where kids are dragged into a senseless postcode gang conflict that has simmered for generations. On one side there is the Young Team, to which Azzy is affiliated, on the other is The Toi and their young counterparts, the Young Toi. 

 

This novel is roughly split into three parts. It starts with Azzy as fourteen and we find him drinking and smoking cannabis and fighting alongside the Young Team. Then we meet him at seventeen and he’s spiralling out of control, the doubts settling in. Finally, he’s twenty-one and is desperate to get out of the life, but with enemies closing in.

 

This is a novel that is very reminiscent of the best of Irvine Welsh, and I’m not just saying that because it’s written in the authentic slang of the region. Rather it brings to a wide readership a world that is rarely seen. White working-class youth, the poverty and deprivation they experience, the alcohol and drug dependency they fall into and the violence they face, is an issue that is depicted in fiction infrequently, certainly in books which receive a wide readership. 

 

What struck me most about this story is the utter pointlessness of the violence between the Young Team and their rivals. While gangsters and drug dealers appear in the book towards the end, the violence the two gangs participate in is nothing to do with this, but rather all to do with geographics. Needless to say, there’s nothing to be gained from their territorial disputes, they’re not fighting over resources and it’s completely without meaning. It's all just something that has been passed down to them through the ages, which is something that Azzy comes to realise. Nor is there an end in sight, as even as Azzy and his surviving friends look for escape, a new generation waits in the wings to continue the war.

 

Based on the author’s real experiences, this is a great debut novel with real heart and one that is highly recommended.

 

4 out of 5 stars